UN vote hardens divide between Israel and Palestinians

UN vote hardens divide between Israel and Palestinians

Full Comment’s Araminta Wordsworth brings you a daily round-up of quality punditry from across the globe. Today: To no one’s huge surprise, the UN General Assembly — packed with Israel’s enemies — voted to upgrade the Palestinians “nonmember observer state.” Israel retaliated over the weekend by announcing it will expand settlements in the West Bank and withhold $100 million in Palestinian tax revenue.

The issue is so polarizing, it is hard to find any consensus about what the latest standoff will produce. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas returned home Sunday to a hero’s welcome in the West Bank city of Ramallah. Britain, France and Sweden recalled their ambassadors to protest the decision to build 3,000 new homes in the West Bank, and Germany said the decision would hurt Israel’s ability to negotiate a long-term peace agreement.

The UN vote could give Palestinians access to the International Criminal Court and the opportunity to accuse Israel of genocide, an option Abbas has indicated he wants to pursue. For Israel, it is confirmation the Palestinians have no interest in a negotiated peace and want nothing less than for it to be wiped off the map.

An editorial in The Jerusalem Post calls on Palestinians to reopen peace negotiations.

After failing to wipe out Israel in 1948 and again in 1967 and after decades of senseless bloodshed and terrorism, the Palestinian people should admit the failures of their past leaders, recognize that the State of Israel is here to stay and accept the idea of reconciliation and negotiation with the Jewish State.
Instead, the Palestinian leadership is once again making a grave mistake that is liable to further delay the realization of Palestinians’ national aspirations. [Obtaining] quasi-statehood status for Palestinians seems motivated more by the PLO’s narrow political interests vis-à-vis Hamas than by a true desire to better the lot of the Palestinian people.

At The GuardianJoseph Massad points out the UN vote actually recognizes a much diminished Palestinian entity.

Despite assurances to the contrary, the new state is likely to undermine the status of the PLO at the UN. Whereas the PLO represented all Palestinians, the PA only represents West Bankers. This recognition has diminished the Palestinian state geographically from 43% of historic Palestine granted by the partition plan to less than 18% of it (possibly 10%, if we factor annexations, settlements, military areas, etc.), and has reduced Palestinians from 12 million people to 2.4 million West Bankers, 40% of whom are refugees.

While recognizing the symbolic importance of the UN vote, Matt Hill at The Daily Telegraph believes,

[It] was motivated as much by Abbas’s need to show Palestinians he’s prepared to stand up to Israel as by diplomatic considerations. And the recent fighting in Gaza redoubled that need by allowing Hamas once again to claim the mantle of “resistance”.
Nothing the General Assembly can do will change the facts on the ground. The “state” of Palestine has no control over its putative borders, two governments and no capital city.
But by defying Israel Abbas may well have saved the Palestinian Authority from irrelevance, giving it a foothold from which to restart negotiations. Now the Palestinians will at least in theory come to the negotiating table as equals, instead of scavenging underneath it for Israel’s crumbs.

In the Detroit News, an editorial suggests the UN recognition will come at a heavy price for ordinary Palestinians.

The vote complicates the United States’ relationship with the United Nations. Congress passed a law forbidding the funding of any agency that gives full recognition of Palestinian statehood. In 2011, the U.S. pulled its money from the United Nations Education, Scientific & Cultural Organization for accepting Palestine as a member. UNESCO is now struggling without the 25% of its budget once provided by the U.S. While the UN vote falls below the full recognition threshold, allowing America to remain a dues-paying member, agencies within the United Nations that follow UNESCO’s lead will lose their U.S. funding.

At Al Jazeera, Mark LeVine has a revolutionary proposal: change the rules of the game.

The only way to stop this process is to change the balance of power … and the only way to do this, given Israel’s overwhelming military superiority and economic development is to change the rules of the game. The only way to do this, despite the UN vote, is to relinquish the dream of an independent Palestine in the West Bank and Gaza and demand citizenship in an enlarged Israeli state, or through a bi-national or parallel state structure that Palestinian leaders have spent a generation shunning instead of developing.
Indeed, the UN vote, like Oslo, locks Palestinians even more tightly into a two-state discourse that Israel has already shown a great talent at manipulating to make its realization almost impossible to achieve.
Forcing Israel to move outside a territorially grounded two-state solution would force Israel to choose between becoming a non-Jewish democracy or … an apartheid state.